Baseball_013-151_791441 11/28/01 2:37 PM Page 22 Library of America • Story of the Week From Baseball: A Literary Anthology (LOA, 2002), pages 22–31. Originally published in The Outing Magazine, September 1909. Headnote by Nicholas Dawidoff NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN As a young man, Charles Emmett Van Loan (1876–1919) worked at a meat- packing company and went to minor-league baseball games around Los Angeles with his boss. He began taking notes on what he saw, and when he converted them into dispatches and submitted them to the Los Angeles Examiner, he was on his way to becoming California’s best baseball writer. He worked for the Los Angeles Morning Herald in 1904, and then for the Denver Post, where he met Damon Runyon. By 1910, the two men were house- mates in New York, colleagues at the sports department of the American. Over the next nine years Van Loan’s journalism and short stories about boxing, horse-racing, golf, Hollywood, and of course baseball appeared in a number of publications, including The Saturday Evening Post, for which he served two stints as an editor. During the first, he became the editorial conduit for Ring Lardner’s humorous sketches that would later be collected as the novel You Know Me Al. This piece, published in The Outing magazine in 1909, shows Van Loan’s ample humor and his sophisticated understanding of the skills in- volved in baseball. The portraits of Ty Cobb and Hal Chase are especially in- teresting since they provide glimpses of the two players before a reputation for recalcitrance (Cobb) or dishonesty (Chase) overtook them. Charles E. Van Loan A Baseball as the Bleachers Like It he man in the box office, whose swift, money-changing fingers Tplay on the pulse of the amusement-loving public, will tell you that a baseball franchise in a large city is a “mint.” The man in the box office cares little for sport; he views it with the sordid eye of one who thinks in figures and dreams in dollars. Those who make a study of the great business of providing amusement for a nation, will tell you that where other outdoor sports and “attractions” count their devotees by tens, baseball drags its hundreds and even thousands through the turnstiles. There must be some good reason for this state of affairs. The same men sit on the bleachers day after day, their straw hats tilted down over keen eyes, their fingers fumbling score cards and 22 Are you receiving Story of the Week each week? Sign up now at loa.org/sotw to receive our weekly alert. Baseball_013-151_791441 11/28/01 2:37 PM Page 23 BASEBALL AS THE BLEACHERS LIKE IT 23 pencils. Everything that the gallery is to the stage, the bleachers are to the diamond. The most merciless critic may be found somewhere be- hind first or third base where he can see everything which happens. The grand stand may be all very well for the thin-skinned ones who must mingle personal comfort with their amusement; the true base- ball fan sits on the bleachers, trimmed down to his shirt sleeves. No wire nettings in front of him, if you please. Why is he there day after day? He can hope to see nothing ab- solutely new, for in the present high stage of its development, profes- sional baseball has reached a point where one new play a season is the average. What is the lure of this mighty magnet—this thing, half sport, half business, which draws its millions of dollars every year? Is it the science of the game—the inside baseball? Nine tenths of the men who go to the theater hope for one of two things: they want to be amused or thrilled. The problem play does not appeal to the man who has found life its own problem. The man who goes to the race track for an afternoon’s sport and does not sell his interest for a bookmaker’s ticket hopes to see a great race with a nose-and-nose finish and three horses driving at the wire. Patrons of the gentle art of the lamented Queensberry, hoot two clever men, who spar for points without damage or gore. These are the same men who make baseball profitable; what then do they see in the national game? PROBLEM PLAYS ON THE DIAMOND For example: it is the ninth inning; the score is 1 to 0, and it has been a battle of the pitchers from the clang of the gong. There have been a few scattering hits, a few brilliant bits of individual fielding, and many weak flies hoisted into the air. It has been a very scientific contest from first to last—so full of science that there has been little else. Ask your bleacher friend what he thinks of that sort of a game. “We-ell,” he will say, “Matty was good to-day and so was the other fellow. We won, of course, but. .” Behind that “but” lurks the secret of the whole thing, the power of the game over its millions of devotees. The melodrama had been lack- ing; the sensational plays which stir the blood, the long sharp hits and the brilliant catches. It had been a problem play with two stars in the cast and sixteen walking gentlemen. Baseball_013-151_791441 11/28/01 2:37 PM Page 24 24 CHARLES E. VAN LOAN Now then, watch your friend in the last half of the eighth inning with the score 3 to 2 against the home team, two men out and the bases filled. It has been a slashing contest, full of free hitting, sharp fielding, and the brilliant double plays which hold the score in small figures. The hard-hitting outfielder of the home team is at bat. Your friend is out on the edge of his seat. Any sort of a safe hit means a tied score; a long single might win the game, and a double . your friend hopes for a double! Watch his eyes when the umpire’s right arm jerks upward as the first ball splits the plate. “Aw, what was he waiting for? Might have known the first ball would be a groover!” Your friend seems peevish. One ball. Wild cheering. Two balls. A demonstration and yells of “Going Up!” Ah! He missed that one! Well, he still has the big one left. Three balls. From the box back of first base comes the sharp bark of the coacher. “Three and two now, ole boy! Three and two! Make him be good!” Watch your friend now. He has stopped breathing. His cigar is dying an unpleasant death. He does not care. Three and two! He has eyes and ears and a taste for one thing only—the drama spread out before him. Once more the gray-clad pitcher cuddles the ball to his chest, nod- ding slightly in answer to the catcher’s signal. Up goes his foot, back goes his body from the hips, a forward lunge, and the arm snaps out in a half circle like a powerful spring uncoiled. The ball flies straight for the catcher’s mitt and at the same instant the three base runners flash into motion. Three and two and two men down—nothing to do but run. The batter pivots with a mighty swing, there is a splitting crack as wood meets leather, and a white dot shoots out over the second base- man’s head, mocking his futile leap. The center fielder is sheering off toward right, racing with a forlorn hope and the right fielder, wiser still, is already on his way toward the fence. DELIRIUM ON THE BLEACHERS How about your friend now? There he is, standing up in his place and tearing the air with a series of Comanche war whoops. All around Baseball_013-151_791441 11/28/01 2:37 PM Page 25 BASEBALL AS THE BLEACHERS LIKE IT 25 you men, and women too, are screaming unintelligible words. The man beside you who gave you such a nasty look when you stepped on his feet, hammers you between the shoulder blades and bellows into your ear: “A triple with bases full! A triple! What do you know about that, eh?” What is the attraction in baseball? Your answer is out there on the bleachers, several thousand strong. Those leaping, howling, white- shirted dervishes have given it to you. It is the melodrama which makes baseball. A baseball fan will go to a dozen poor games rather than miss that sort of a play, and when at last he recovers his breath he will tell you that he is amply repaid for his time and money. The scientific contest interests him because he understands every move in the game, but if you want to bring him to his feet, you must give him melodrama. Inside baseball? Yes, he knows something of that, too. He has made a study of inside baseball, sitting above the great masters. He recog- nizes and appreciates good pitching, but the thing which brings him to his feet with the howl of a timber wolf is the long clean drive to the fence, or the seemingly impossible catch. The melodrama “gets” him every time. One of the grizzled old baseball generals once said: “Give me a team of sluggers and I’ll chance the errors.” He knew what the fans wanted to see. Ask the first youngster you meet to name the two greatest baseball players in the two big leagues.